The Badger Riot (2 page)

Ralph gazed east along the track stretching toward the trestle. He was waiting for the arrival of the train that today would be carrying with it recruits for the International Woodworkers of America, the new loggers' union. A few weeks ago the union had called a strike against the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company, a pulp and paper conglomerate whose owners were English.

The union had rented an empty house, owned by Mrs. Noel, over on Church Road, as a lodging place for the strikers from out of town. Ralph's instructions were to take the incoming men over there and bed them down.

Ralph flicked his cigarette down onto the snow by the tracks where it fizzled briefly. His mind drifted back to his old grandfather who used to tell him about the time when the railway was laid across the bogs, through the thick forests and over the high plateaus. A river of iron, he said, a pathway to a different world.

Grandfather's memory was long and there were many evenings when Ralph sat beside the old man and listened to his stories. Grandfather told him that before the railway came, even before the white man, his ancestor, a Mi'kmaq trapper, came to Badger Brook from the western part of the island. His name was John Drum and, followed by his brothers and cousins, he became the first chief. There was a time when they shared this area with a few remaining Beothuk. Ralph's grandfather, who said he had been born some
where around 1859, told him that
his
father, Michael, had remembered the sad, dispossessed people as the remains of a once proud and handsome race.

It was said that John took a Beothuk woman into the family.
Beothuk blood runs through us, my son,
Grandfather had said, and there was pride in his voice.

Why are you proud of that, Grandfather?
young Ralph had wanted to know.

Because
the Beothuk was a strong Indian, Grandfather had answered. A smart, strong Indian.

The sound of the train's whistle interrupted Ralph's thoughts. The train thundered over the trestle spanning Badger River and pulled up in front of the station platform. Huge and invincible, the large locomotive came to rest. The small crowd on the platform turned expectantly, subconsciously sniffing the peculiar grease-steam-toilet smell that only trains had, and that evoked a sense of faraway places. The doors of the passenger cars flew back and about fifty people climbed down, most of them loggers who had joined the new union. They had come from points east, having made their way in to the train stations from various bays and coves. They had answered a call, and knew they had ahead of them many long cold hours on a picket line in mid-winter. Ralph stepped forward and, raising his normally soft voice, called out to assemble the men.

During the night the river water had risen high enough to come in over the floor. When Bridey Sullivan swung her legs out of bed they landed in the ice-cold wetness.

“Ned,” she screamed. “Get up! We're going to drown!”

Ned Sullivan shot up in bed, all sleep immediately gone from his eyes. His first instinct was to panic, but he took one look at Bridey's terrified face and quickly found an inner reserve of strength. Ned was like that. Whenever there was a crisis, with the family or in his job on the drive, people said you could count on him to be calm in the middle of the storm. He tried to shush his wife, but she continued to scream. “What are we going to do Ned? Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we're trapped here, Ned,” she shrieked.

“Calm down Bridey, it's going to be all right. These houses are built for this kind of thing.” Ned got up and waded in bare feet through three inches of water to find his goat rubbers over by the door. He sat down on a chair by the table and pulled them on over his feet, his toes already turning blue.

Ned went to the window and looked out to see water surrounding his house. The scene was something he had never witnessed before and could never have imagined. During the night the mighty Exploits River, known to locals simply as “the River,” had overflowed its banks. Gone was the roadway, the fences just showing their top posts. Cut off by flood waters, every house looked like an island unto itself, one isolated from the other. He could see
a small boat and a couple of canoes bobbing on the water as they took residents to dry land.

Bridey splashed through the water, screaming even louder, “Oh my Sacred Heart of Jesus, Ned. My trunk, my trunk! Help me.”

He tore his eyes away from the flood scene and turned to see Bridey, her nightgown trailing in the water, tears streaming down her face. She was trying to drag a big old leather trunk over to the bed. As he sloshed toward her, Bridey's nightgown became tangled around her legs and down she went, sending up a splash. He reached out to help her up, but she pushed him away screaming, “Never mind me, get the trunk up out of the water!”

Not wanting to make the bed wet, Ned grabbed the precious trunk and hoisted it up onto the kitchen table. Bridey had brought the trunk all the way from Stock Cove, and it held heirlooms and years of memories. She had been collecting things for it ever since she was a young girl. It meant the world to her and Ned knew it.

There was a bang on the door, but first Ned wrapped Bridey in a blanket and settled her back on the bed. He kissed the top of her head and her sobs subsided as he moved to the door. He pulled it open, sending a little wave of muddy brown water in over the kitchen floor.

Outside, two men were looking up at Ned from a canoe at his doorstep. One of them had pounded on Ned's door with his paddle. Already aboard were Mrs. Pike and her five-year-old daughter. Her scared face peered up at him from under a thick woollen cap. Paddling the canoe was Mr. Peter Drum and his son Louis – two Mi'kmaq men. They looked strong and capable and instinctively Ned felt he could trust them. Old man Drum spoke out of one side of his mouth, the other side full of a large wad of chewing tobacco.

“Morning, Ned. Well b'y, the shaggin' River is up again. No one expected it this year. You ever see the like? Some state, isn't it?” He sized up the watery scene as he spat a stream of brown baccy juice over the side of the canoe.

“Well sir, I'm some glad to see you fellas this morning. My
missus is having a fit in there. Can you load her aboard your canoe and take her up to dry ground?”

“Yes, b'y, that's what we're here for. We're the rescue party.” Young Louis rolled his eyes and smirked.

In the front of the canoe the Pike child started to wail. “I'm scared, Mommy, I want to go home.”

Ned looked back to Peter Drum and asked him to wait a couple of minutes. As he returned to Bridey he could hear Mrs. Pike trying to calm the youngster.

He found his wife dressed and no longer crying, but the distress and shock was evident in her face as he lowered her into the canoe. She was still fretting about the trunk, but Peter Drum told her that the water would never go as high as the kitchen table and, in fact, would soon start to recede, as the dynamiters were at work downstream.

As the little canoe pulled away Bridey realized that Ned wasn't aboard. “Ned, Ned,” she cried, “come with me!”

“Don't worry, my duckie,” Ned called back. “I'll be along later. I'm going to see if I can help out. Another pair of strong hands won't go astray in Badger this day.”

In 1925, Ned Sullivan had come to Badger seeking work in the lumberwoods. During the months working with the A.N.D. Company, he came to like the growing Company town with its hustle and bustle, its access to services and, especially, the camaraderie among its people. When he came down out of the woods he would often climb the round hill that overlooked the River and a great sense of peace and belonging would steal over him.

Originally, Ned's plan was like that of the other men: to go back to his home in Stock Cove, Bonavista Bay, when the time came to fish again. But gradually he began to dream a different dream on those long evenings up on the hill. Life inland had begun to appeal to him, and the longing to be on the salt water that seized so many
men who came into the woods from the outports was fading for him.

Ned was a quick and lively fellow who caught on fast. In the first year he was a cutter. But the working life of a riverman caught his fancy, and he sought a coveted spot on the drive. There were various trades in the logging industry, but the river drivers were considered the elite. This job wasn't for everyone. It required a certain daring and a devil-may-care attitude. And that described young Ned Sullivan.

Ned started as an oarsman on the riverboats at a wage of twenty-five cents an hour. In later years he would tell his son about the fourteen-foot ash oars and how hard they were on the hands. Until they were toughened up, every evening the oarsmen would have to grease their palms with fatback pork.

Later, when Ned got to know the runs on various parts of the rivers, for twenty-seven cents an hour he did the log dance of a driver, his nimble feet defying gravity. He proved to be outstanding as he flicked from log to log like a ballet dancer. A few years later, perhaps because Ned was the best at what he did or perhaps because of his Irish luck, he became drive boss, responsible for the entire operation.

Ned and Bridey had been married for three years and still the couple had no children. Ned was constantly trying to persuade Bridey to move inland, describing Badger as a fine place to live, with a bright future. So, although it meant leaving her family behind, Bridey pulled up roots and moved to Badger in the fall of 1927 to be near her husband.

The young couple rented a small, two-bedroom house down by the River. The rent was cheap, and when spring came they found out why. Every year, extreme cold temperatures caused the ice in the River to wharf up. Having no other place to go, the water rose up over the banks and into the town of Badger. Some years the ice was worse than others, and 1928 was a bad one. Most houses had already been raised up a few feet to try to avoid the flooding, but that winter had been particularly cold and the ice was thick.

The flat land near the River had flooded first, and the day before, Bridey had stood in her doorway watching with alarm as the water rose. Being from Bonavista Bay, she had never seen a flood before, but Ned kept assuring her that the house was high enough and the water would not come up over the steps. But he'd been wrong, and now she was in a canoe headed to dry ground.

That evening Ned met up with Bridey, and along with the other displaced people, they spent the night sitting in the waiting room of the railway station. This was the Sullivans' first experience with the floods that the native Badgerites endured so stoically.

Strategically placed dynamite did its job and next morning the water had gone down. There wasn't too much damage done to the little house, but Bridey was not content to stay there any longer.

“Ned,” she said, “I can't live here like this. I can hardly sleep for worry that the house is going to flood again. Every morning when I puts my feet to the canvas I swear I can still feel that cold water.” She shivered as she said this, although they were sitting in the kitchen and the wood stove was blasting them with heat to dry up the damp floor.

Ned agreed with her and started the search for another place to live.

He found a house for sale Up the Track, the name given to the railway track area at the west end of Badger going up toward the Gaff Topsails. The land started to rise there, on its thirty-eight-mile ascent to the top of the Topsails plateau. Neighbours told Ned that the flood water never reached in that far, so his Bridey and her trunk would be safe. In time they got used to the trains that ran by on the track just twenty feet from their door. Bridey didn't care if the whistle of the train coming down the grade at all hours in the night woke her from sleep as long as she wasn't waking to water on her floor.

The house had been built by one of the train conductors who was being transferred to Bishops Falls and was looking to get it off his hands. It was a white-clapboard two-storey with four bedrooms upstairs. The kitchen was large and heated by a wood stove, with a
grate cut in the ceiling to allow the heat to go upstairs. Off the kitchen were a parlour and another bedroom. Bridey liked the house immediately and they soon moved in. To be extra sure, she had Ned bring the trunk upstairs and put in the largest room, which was to be their bedroom.

As the summer was drawing to a close, Bridey became pregnant. They had just about given up thinking they would ever have a child, and Ned credited their move to the new house as to what did the trick. Their first child, Assumpta Jennifer, was born in May of 1929.

The Mi'kmaq midwife, Missus Annie Drum, brought her into the world. “Well, Missus Sullivan, your first child has a caul over her face.”

Bridey was exhausted from straining and pushing. “What? Is she all right?”

“She's wonderful, my dear. A lovely little redhead, she is. Don't worry; I'll pass her to you when I get her cleaned up. I s'pose you knows, do you, that a caul is a rare thing? Children born with it are special. Out of all my twenty-two children, only one had a caul, my little Ralphie. His grandfather said he might become a chief one of these days.”